


Caffeinated

by DollyPop



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Caffeine Addiction, Canon Het Relationship, Canon Related, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Romantic Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 15:43:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6811612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DollyPop/pseuds/DollyPop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She should have known he'd wait until the last possible moment to grade exams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Caffeinated

She should have known the second she walked into the lab from spending the day with Azusa, intent on giving Stein some time to finish grading the papers from the Super Written Exam. The first clue was when she stepped in when it was already dark and saw the three empty cans. She should have known. A piece of her must have felt it in her bones, the premonition of what she was about to walk into, because her feet immediately turned to walk to a Bunsen burner and make some coffee, but she stopped when she saw yet another empty can of Monster next to the cleaned-out coffee tin.

She bought that yesterday. After they mysteriously went through three in the past four days.

When she made her way to where he was slumped over his desk, a massive stack of papers in front of him, Stein was staring at his hands as though they were rendered in Technicolor, and she blinked at him as he turned them over. First, he stared at his palms, seemingly memorizing the lines, before flipping his hand and looking at the back, wiggling his fingers.

It was the fifth time he’d done it that she finally, tentatively, stepped forward, looking over his shoulder and spying the fact that he had given Kid a 77 solely because of the fact that the boy had an aversion to the number.

Death, he couldn’t even write his entire name at the top. Stein couldn’t just give the boy 77 extra credit points on the sake of messing with his students.

“Stein?” she called out, looking to the wastebasket where more cans were collected, as well as a few papers she had a sinking feeling were supposed to be graded. When he grunted, she gently brought her hand to the side of his face, dragging his gaze away from where he was enraptured by his phalanges. His eyes were bloodshot and she cringed, softly stroking his cheekbone. “Stein, when was the last time you went to sleep?”

She should know, frankly. He slept next to her, most nights. Or, rather, he promised that he’d come to bed as soon as he was done grading papers for the last week. She tried to stay up for him, but, frankly, she had a love for shuteye that she couldn’t avoid, and she wanted to trust him to actually go to bed at a decent hour.

Grading papers her ass. Marie had given him the benefit of the doubt since he’d seemed fine up until that day, but she knew him too well to be surprised by the fact that he’d procrastinated on grading the one exam he actually had to report scores to. She knew most of his lesson plans included hazy 80’s nature documentaries he found amusing and little else. She at least gave him bonus points since he voiced them over, providing choppy narration. (Her favorite was the shark documentary, in which he referred to them solely as Soul’s Relatives.) Still, he could bullshit every other grade he gave his students but this one.

It figured.

He simply stared at her, as though not understanding the question his expression unchanging and she found that his eyes had focused on her too closely, seemingly in awe of something. She sighed, softly shaking him. “Stein? When was the last time you slept?”

“Tuesday,” he informed her, not blinking. She reared back, slightly.

“Stein, it’s Sunday night.

“Tuesday,” he repeated, both his palms coming to her face, but hovering as though unwilling to touch her. Marie took a total of four second to add up how many cans of Monster he had, as well as the empty coffee tin, and how he seemed to be swaying in his chair, unbalance even when he was seated.

“You’re going to bed,” she said, refusing to accept any argument from him. “I’ll finish grading.”

“It’s only four,” he commented, still staring at her, unwavering.

Had he blinked when she did? Did she miss it? And, besides which, it was closer to 9 pm, not even close to the 4 he was referencing. She furrowed her brows, turning to look at the computer screen but finding it turned off. Instead, drawn on one of her many sticky notes and tacked to the blank screen was a poorly rendered clock with the hands pointing to 4.

Dear Death, he needed sleep.

“A nap, then,” she said, slowly dragging his chair over to the couch, planning on dumping him on the cushions and spending a few extra hours weeding through the work of a class that was not his. He leaned back precariously as she rolled him away from his desk and she was worried when he wobbled, knowing he was probably all too concussed from falling over so often in that damn death-trap. As she pulled him away, he grabbed hold of his entire desk and, by miracle or a laughing fate, the entire thing came with him, scraping over the floor and she stopped when the papers spilled over.

She noted that Maka’s had been stapled to a picture of Spirit she’d insisted he kept on his table.

Lord, she wouldn’t even be surprised at that point if he’d eaten some of the exams. She doesn’t think he’d even left his station since she walked out that morning, informing him that breakfast was on the stove, since she’d made too much.

If she listened in close enough, she could still hear the water running from when he’d been in it during the more productive part of most people’s day. He was in the shower at 8 am on the dot when she left and she almost grimaced at how high the water bill would be.

He wasn’t going to give in, then, it seemed. Any of his comments would be some strange haze of pop-culture reference and general trolling of his students, then: not that it was usually different. She sighed, closing her eye and releasing her hold on his chair.

She rolled her gaze to the heavens, knowing Lord Death was in his office, but she wasn’t feeling up to getting her compact mirror and asking him for some sort of blessing or a miracle. It was only when she heard the pop of yet another can popping open that she looked back at her boyfriend, staring as he peered into the inside of the container.

The ultimate defeat was when she only stretched over him, grabbing up what she thought was another can. It took a few tries for her to find one that hadn’t been previously emptied, but when she did, she only cracked it open and tipped her head back, chugging the entire thing in seemingly one go.

His eyes looked as though they sparked to life, but she only gently bumped him with her hip after she scooped up some papers.

“Scoot over,” she said, practically sitting on him as she dragged them to the edge of the desk, grabbing up a pen and half of the papers.

It was an office seat for one.

But, speaking as a woman who knew she was going to spend most of the night helping her boyfriend who had abandoned his own stack in favor of examining her hair, she didn’t really see the point in mentioning that particular fact.

With a precision that had proved deadly on more than one occasion, she chucked her empty can to the wastebasket that had been left where the desk previously was.

When she grabbed the one Stein had opened, he didn’t even make a sound.

“You’re getting more of those, I hope you realize,” she told him, looking at Tsubaki’s exam in front of her. Stein’s comment at the top was in German.

It was going to be a long night.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm approx. 7 thousand years late in uploading everything I wrote for SteinMarie week, but, uh, here?


End file.
